A hand holds up a book, titled "The Man Who Loved Wasps, a Howard Ensign Evans reader". The photo was taken from inside the cab of a boat, with a cloudy, ocean view in the background.

The Man Who Loved Wasps - a nice collection of essays by pompilid taxonomist Howard E. Evans. This collection covers a variety of topics, but mostly insects and birds. Perfect for passing time waiting for the fish to bite.
#Hymenoptera #entomology #naturalhistory 🐝🧪

A small, pale starfish with 5 points on the palm of an orange fishing glove. The edge of the starfish is adorned in small protrusions.

The underside of the starfish. A darker tan line radiates from the center to each point of the sea star.

I met the cutest little sea star yesterday while fishing for sablefish in Prince William Sound. About 1"/2.5 cm across, so tiny! It came up from 2400 ft, quite a journey. Someone on iNaturalist identified it as the cookie-cutter sea star, Ctenodiscus crispatus #seastar #Alaska #deepsea

A pair of feet wearing socks, standing on a wood porch in front of a garden background. The socks are white with blue toes, and feature a party of dancing potatoes on the feet.

Last year's pair, featuring a potato that is substantially cooler than I will ever be. 🥔

New conference idea: instead of bringing posters, we all just show up wearing socks printed with our research topics?!

A pair of socks on feet, standing on a wood porch in front of a snowy background. The socks feature cows in a pasture on the ankles, kelp and tiny crabs on the feet, and say "Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension" on the cuff.

My department just dropped their new sock line: an ode to research on the use of kelp in livestock feed. Hilarious? Yes. Oddly charming? Also yes. 🧦🐄
#UAF #sciencefashion

My tiniest niece insists that it's only a fart if it makes a sound, so for her sake I hope Vachal knew what he was doing and this is, in fact, a very noisy bee.

A blue hardcover book titled "An Annotated Catalog of the Halictid Bees of the Western Hemisphere" with a yellow, rectangular magnet on top. The magnet reads "GIVE MY REPRINTS and", followed by a checkbook for "all" or "most", "of my money to: Natural History Literature Rescue, good old paper dot org."

So excited to find these two books from the Natural History Literature Rescue in my mailbox today! NHLR keeps books and other literature out of the trash and in the hands of folks who can use them. Adopt a book and/or send them your books! goodoldpaper.org
#naturalhistory #goodoldpaper #literature 🧪

A small, dark wasp forming a glob of resin with her mandibles on the outside of a wood trap nest.

A partially sealed tunnel in a trap nest. A small pair of mandibles holding a chunk of resin is visible through the opening.

I had the joy of watching this little aphid wasp over the course of a couple weeks last June. So many trips gathering resin! I reared out the offspring of this tunnel over the past month: mostly Passaloecus cuspidatus with a few Omalus aeneus for good measure #hymenoptera #entomology #Alaska 🐝🧪

So cool!

This could potentially be an excellent engagement strategy; I've re-read this paper several times assuming I must have missed something important methodologically. Try it out in your next manuscript!

A screen grab of an acknowledgments section of a scientific paper, with a highlighted section reading, "The use of Special Kitty brand cat food in these experiments is in no way an endorsement of this product by the researchers or the University of Georgia."

I love reading acknowledgments sections for their little bits of warmth and humor. This inexplicable "non-endorsement" of Special Kitty Cat Food, in a study which as far as I understand makes absolutely no use of cat food whatsoever, is truly 10/10. #entomology 🧪

Two beehives dug out from the snow in a backyard, leaving an asymmetrical pit in the snow. There is a dark sprinkling of spent coffee grounds scattered about to help hasten the melting.

Hello and welcome to my bee pit: a phrase made possible by this year's unusually cold spring 🐝

I'm asking this scattering of spent coffee grounds to work some real magic here.
#beekeeping #alaska

Fairbanks airport will finish up with zero days with a high temperature above freezing between November 1 & March 31. That hasn't happened before in Fairbanks’ 120-year climate history. Previous fewest was 2 days above freezing in 2006-07. The average for Nov-Mar is 16 days. #akwx #weather #Climate

There's no way I will remember all that and I'm not even a little bit sorry.

Thoughts on the book so far?

A woman in a down coat and puffy hat picks cones off of a larch tree in front of a snow-covered background.

Too cold for bug catching? No problem. I'll just drag tree bits indoors to see what wakes up. #entomology #alaska 🦟🧪

So relieved to see this! All too often I find myself working with an insect that was last referenced in an obscure piece of literature from over a century ago. The BHL is my go-to for those pieces and I am so grateful for all their work archiving these precious entomological treasures! #ILoveBHL 🐛🧪

Just added this entomological dictionary to my word processor and am absolutely delighted at all the words that no longer give me a red squiggly! Highly recommend, and it's free to use! Built by my friend @ahaberski.bsky.social #entomology #dictionary 🪲🧪

This is awesome!! Great idea, the worst part about getting a new computer is all the "add to dictionary" clicking I have to do over.

A hand holding a hardcover book with a photo of a combined sawfly in the center, covered in pollen. The title reads "bees, wasps, and ants: the indispensible roles of Hymenoptera in gardens". By Eric Grissell.

Enjoying this book about hyms by Eric Grissell very much. I especially love his interpretation that the etymology of the order is based on the hamuli; he references the parallels to the name Hymenaios, the Greek god of marriage. "Membranous wing" has always seemed suspiciously non-specific. 🐝 🐜

Thanks, Adam!

A small yak leans her head on a woman's thigh as she pets its head. The yak has a purple ear tag that reads "Flora".

Visited Delta, AK this weekend to teach a pollinator workshop and I got to visit a coworker's yak farm after!! This is Flora, she is just 1 year old and I LOVE her ♥️
#babyyak #alaskalove

Get ready for Gall Week May 2025! Mark your calendars for the next Gall Week event - May 3-11! It's a bit later than last year, so hopefully, it's a better fit for some of us. Let me know what you think, and what you think might be a ...

Thank you! And there is one coming up May 3-11! There often is a spring and fall gall week but the spring one is typically a bit too early for Alaska. www.inaturalist.org/projects/gal...

A screen grab of an article titled "Community science collaboration enhances understanding of fireweed flower gall midge distribution in Alaska". The cover shows a three panel photograph displaying a fireweed flower spire on the left, a closeup of a galled bud in the middle, and an opened bud with larvae inside on the right.

An article about a recent community science project on the fireweed flower gall midge in Alaska! These galls caught my attention while doing field work for a pollinator research project but turned into a project all of their own! www.akentsoc.org/doc/AKES_new... #entomology #Alaska #cecidomyiidae 🧪🪰

A mini petri dish set on a table with many microhymenoptera inside, lit from the side.

A headlamp set on the table works great for when you want to prep mini hyms for mounting at the kitchen table instead of at your desk (filter paper underneath the mini petri for contrast)✨ #hymenoptera #entomology

Lateral habitus of a point-mounted rose seed chalcid, Megastigmus nigrovariegatus. She is about 4 mm long and a mottled golden brown color.

The Rosa acicularis seed from which the wasp emerged. A tiny circular hole is visible on the surface, which the wasp chewed when she was ready to emerge from the seed.

Seed-feeding chalcids are always a favorite to rear out; getting a whole adult wasp out of a tiny seed is nearly magical! This tiny rose seed chalcid (Megastigmus nigrovariegatus) emerged this week from a wild rose seed (Rosa acicularis) collected last month. 😍 🧪 #chalcidoidea #entomology #Alaska

A woman is standing next to a mossy boulder holding a white tray with one hand and raking the moss with her fingers using the other hand. The landscape is springtime in an Alaska coastal rainforest; some snow patches remain and the trees haven't yet leafed out but the moss is very green.

On today's episode of Moss Makeover, a moss-covered boulder gets brushed by an entomologist who decided to take a quick look for Boreus snow scorpionflies during a fishing trip. Sadly she did not find any Boreus but this moss looks really great. #entomology #mecoptera #Alaska 🧪

A puzzle picked together to depict many different caterpillars arranged by color starting with reds in the top left, yellows and greens diagonal across the center, and browns in the lower right corner. "The Caterpillar Lab" is printed down the right-hand side of the puzzle.

The world's cutest puzzle!! A gift from @danasaur406.bsky.social ♥️ 🐛🐛🐛
#thecaterpillarlab #entomology #lepidoptera

Very nice!!

Awesome!! I started mine in 2019... still working on it haha